LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



^^Ta 






UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



The Elzevir Librari'- D-:^^ tf\ r^^^^^ Weekly, $10.00 a Year. 

vdi.v N0.2SL rrice lO wentS. oa i2,\m 



SCIENCE 



A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY 



COMPILED BY 

WM. SLOANE KENNEDY 



NEW YORK: 

JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER. 

The Alden Book Co., Chicago. 



• I 



SCIENCE 



A IIUSKIN ANTHOLOGY 



COMPILED BY 

WM. SLOANE KENNEDY 



'^ I have ahvays thought that more true force of persuasion might he ob- 
tained by rightly choosing and arranging loliat others have said, 
than by painfidly saying it again in one''s own way.'''' 
— RusKiN, Fors Clavigera, Vol. I., p. 281. 





NEW YORK : 
JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER 

1886. 



<0 






Copyright, 1886, 

BY 

JOHN B. ALDEN. 



(! O N T E N T S 



Chapter I. 



Serpents, 
Birds, 



425 

427 



B-^'tany, 



Chapter II. 



Minerals, 



Chapter HI. 



440 



(!1(>U(1S, 



Chapter IV. 



446 



Bits of Thought, 



Chapter V. 



453 



A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 



PART IV.-SCIENCE. 

CHAPTER I. 
Serpents and B1RD3. 



SERPENTS. 

A SPECTRAL Procession of spotted Dust.— The 
serpent crest of the king's crown, or of the god's, 
on the piUars of Egypt, is a mystery ; but the ser- 
pent itself, gliding past the pillar's foot, is it less a 
mystery? Is there, indeed, no tongue, except the 
mute forked flash from its lips, in that running 
brook of horror on the ground ? . • . That rivulet 
of smooth silver — how does it flow, think you ? It 
literally rows on the earth, with every scale for an 
oar ; it bites the dust with the ridges of its body. 
Watch it, when it moves slowly : — A wave, but with- 
out wind ! a current, but with no fall ! all the body 
moving at the same instant, yet some of it to one 
side, some to another, or some forvv^ard, and the 
rest of the coil backwards ; but all with the same 
calm will and equal way — no contraction, no exten- 
sion ; one soundless, causeless, march of .sequent 
rings, and spectral procession of spotted dust, with 
dissolution in it fangs, dislocation in its coils. 
Startle it ; — the winding stream will become a 
twisted arrow; — the wave of poisoned life will lash 
through the grass like a cast lance. It scarcely 
breathes with its one lung (the other shrivelled and 
abortive); it is passive to the sun and shade, and 
is cold or hot like a stone ; yet " it can outclimb the 
monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, out- 
wrestle the athlete, and crush the tiger." It is a 

425 



426 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

divine hieroglyph of the demoniao power of the 
earth — of the entire earthly nature.. As the bird is 
the clothed power of the air, so this is the clothed 
power of the dust ; as the bird the symbol of the 
Sf)irit of life, so this of the grasjp and sting of death. 
— Athena, p. 58. 

A HOXEYSUCKLE WITH A HEAD PUT OlST. — I Said 

that a serpent was a honeysuckle w^ith a head jjut 
on. You perhaj)S thought I was jesting ; but no- 
thing is more mysterious in the compass of creation 
than the relation of flowers to the serpent tribe. . . . 
In the most accurate sense, the honeysuckle is an 
anguis — a strangling thing. The ivy stem increases 
Avith age, without compressing the tree trunk, any 
more than the rock, that it adorns ; but the wood- 
bine retains, to a degree not yet measured, but 
almost, I believe, after a certain time, unchanged, 
the first scope of its narrow contortion ; and the 
growing wood of the stem it has seized is contorted 
with it, and at last paralyzed and killed. — Deuca- 
lion, p. 189. 

Deadly Serpents all have sad Colors. — The 
fatal serj)ents are all of the French school of art — 
French gray ; the throat of the asp, French blue, 
the brightest thing I know in the deadly snakes. 
The rest are all gravel color, mud color, blue-x:>ill 
color, or in general, as I say, French high-art color. 
— Deucalion, p. 191. 

A Serpent in Motion. — You see that one-half of 
it can move anywhere without stirring the other ; 
and accordingly you may see a foot or two of a 
large snake's body moving one way, and another 
foot or two moving the other way, and a bit be- 
tween not moving at all; which I, altogether, think 
we may specifically call "Parliamentary" motion. 
— Deucalion, p. 193. 

A Serpent's Tongue. — But now, here's the first 
thing, it seems to me, we've got to ask of the 
scientific people, what use a serpent has for his 
tongue, since it neither Avants it to talk with, to 
taste with, to hiss with, nor, so far as I knov/, to 



SGIENGE—SERPENTS AND BIRDS. 427 

lick with, and least of all to sting with ; and yet, 
for people who do not know the creature, the little 
vibrating forked thread, flashed out of its mouth, 
and back again, as quick as lightning, is the most 
threatening i^art of the beast; but what is the use 
of it ? Nearly every other creature but a snake 
can do all sorts of mischief with its tongue. A 
woman worries with it, a chameleon catches flies 
with it, a snail files away fruit with it, a humming- 
bird steals honey with it, a cat steals milk with it, 
a pholas digs holes in rocks with it, and a gnat digs 
holes in us with it ; but the poor snake cannot do 
any manner of harm with it whatsoever; and what 
is his tongue forked for ? — Deucalion, p. 185. 

How Eels swim.— Nothing in animal instinct or 
movement is more curious than the way young 
eels get up beside the waterfalls of the highland 
streams. They get first into the jets of foam at the 
edge, to be thrown ashore by them, and then wrig- 
gle up the smooth rocks — heaven knows how. If 
you like, any of you, to put on greased sacks, with 
your arms tied down inside, and your feet tied 
together, and then try to wriggle up after them on 
rocks as smooth as glass, I think even the skilfulest 
members of the Alpine Club will agree with me as 
to the difficulty of the feat ; and though I have 
watched them at it for hours, I do not know how 
much of serpent, and how much of fish, is mingled 
in the motion. — Deucalion, p. 188. 



BIRDS. 

The bird is little more than a drift of the air 
brought into form by plumes ; the air is in all its 
quills ; it breathes through its whole frame and 
flesh, and glows with air in its flying, like blown 
flame : it rests upon the air, subdues it, surpasses it, 
outraces it ; — is the air, conscious of itself, conquer- 
ing itself, ruling itself. 

Also, into the throat of the bird is given the voice 
of the air. All that in the wind itself is Aveak, wild, 



423 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

useless in sweetness, is knit together in its song. 
As we may imagine the wild form of the cloud 
closed into the perfect form of the bird's wings, so 
the wild voice of the cloud into its ordered and com- 
manded voice ; unwearied, ripi)iing through the 
clear heaven in its gladness, interpreting all intense 
passion through the soft spring nights, bursting 
into acclaim and rapture of choir at daybreak, or 
hsping and twittering among the boughs and 
hedges through heat of day, like little winds that 
only make the cowslij^ bells shake, and ruffle the 
petals of the wild rose. 

Also, upon the plumes of the bird are put the colors 
of the air : on these the gold of the cloud, that can- 
not be gathered by any covetousness; the rubies of 
the clouds, that are not the price of Athena, but «re 
Athena ; the vermilion of the cloud-bar, and the 
flame of the cloud crest, and the snow of the cloud, 
and its shadow, and the melted blue of the deep 
wells of the sky— all these, seized by the creating 
spirit, and woven by Athena herself into films and 
threads of plume ; with wave on wave following 
and fading along breast, and throat, and opened 
wings, infinite as the dividing of the foam and the 
sifting of the sea-sand ; — even the white down of 
the cloud seeming to flutter up between the stronger 
plumes, seen, but too soft for touch. — Athena, p. 56. 

A Bird's Beak.— I do not think it is distinctly 
enough felt by us that the beak of a bird is not 
only its mouth, but its hand, or rather its two hands. 
For, as its arms and hands are turned into wings, 
all it has to depend upon, in economical and prac- 
tical life, is its beak. The beak, therefore, is at 
once its sword, its carpenter's tool-box, and its 
dressing-ease ; i)artly also its musical instrument j 
all this besides its function of seizing and prepar- 
ing the food, in which function alone it has to be 
a trap, carving-knife, and teeth, all in one. — Love's 
Ueinie, p. 16. 

The Marriage of the Hair-brush and the 
Whistle. — Feathers are smoothed down, as a field 



SCIENCE— SERPENTS AND BIRDS. 429 

of corn by wind with rain; only the swathes laid in 
beautiful order. They are fur, so structurally 
placed as to imply, and submit to, the perpetually 
swift forward motion. In fact, I have no doubt 
the Darwinian theory on the subject is that the 
feathers of birds once stuck up all erect, like the 
bristles of a brush, and have only been blown flat 
by continual flying. ]N"ay, we might even suffi- 
ciently represent the general manner of conclusion 
in the Darwinian system by the statement that if 
you fasten a hair-brush to a mill-wheel, with the 
handle forward, so as to develop itself into a neck 
by moving always in the same direction, and within 
continual liearing of a steam-whistle, after a cer- 
tain number of revolutions the hair-brush will fall 
in love with the whistle ; they will marry, lay an 
egg, and the produce will be a nightingale. — Love's 
Meinie, p. 20. 

No Natural History of Birds yet writtex.— 
We have no natural history of birds written yet. 
It cannot be written but by a scholar and a gentle- 
man ; and no English gentleman in recent times 
has ever thought of birds except as flying targets, 
or flavorous dishes. ... In general, the scientific 
natural liistory of a bird consists of four articles : 
First, the name and estate of the gentleman whose 
gamekeeper shot the last that was seen in England; 
Secondly, two or three stories of doubtful origin, 
printed in every book on the subject of birds for 
the last fifty years ; Thirdly, an account of the 
feathers from the comb to the rump, with enumer- 
ation of the colors which are never more to be seen 
on the living bird by English eyes ; and, lastly, a 
discussion of the reasons why none of the twelve 
names which former naturalists have given to the 
bird are of any further use, and why the present 
author has given it a thirteenth, which is to be 
universally, and to the end of time, accepted. — 
Love's Meinie, p. 7. 

The Eagle. — Wlien next you are travelling by 
express sixty miles an hour, past a grass bank, try 



i;]0 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

to see a grasshopper, and you will get some idea of 
an eagle's oj^tical business, if it takes only the line 
of ground underneath it. Does it take more ? — 
Eagle's Nest, p. 74. 

The Robix. — If you think of it, you will find one 
of the robin's very chief ingratiatory faculties is his 
dainty and delicate movement — his footing it featly 
here and there. Whatever prettiness there may be 
in his red breast, at his brightest he can always be 
outshone by a brickbat. But if he is rationally 
proud of anything about him, I should think a 
robin must be proud of his legs. Hundreds of birds 
have longer and more imposing ones, but for real 
neatness, finish, and precision of action, commend 
me to his fine little ankles, and fine little feet. — 
Love's lleinie, p. 18. 

The SwALiiOW. — The bird which lives with you 
in your own houses, and which purifies for you, 
from its insect pestilence, the air that you breathe. 
Thus the sweet domestic thing has done, for men, 
at least, these four thousand years. She has been 
their companion, not of the home merely, but 
of the hearth and the threshold ; companion 
only endeared by departure, and showing better 
her loving-kindness by her faithful return. Type 
sometimes of the stranger, she has softened us to 
hospitality ; type always of the suppliant, she has 
enchanted us to mercy; and, in her feeble presence, 
the cowardice, or the Avrath, of sacrilege has 
changed into the fidelities of sanctuary. Herald of 
our summer, she glances through our days of glad- 
ness ; nuinberer o our years, she would teach us 
to apply our hearts to wisdom; — and yet, so little 
have we regarded her, that this very day, scarcely 
able to gather from all I can find told of her enough 
to explain so much as the unfolding of her wings, I 
can tell you nothing of her life — nothing of her 
journeying. I cannot learn how she builds, nor 
how she chooses the i:)lace of her wandering, nor 
how she traces the i^atli of her return. Remaining 
thus blind and careless to the true ministries of the 



SCIENGE-SERFENTS AND BIRBS. 431 

humble creature whom God has really sent to 
serve us, we in our pride, thinking ourselves sur- 
rounded by the pursuivants of the sky, can yet 
only invest them'v^ith majesty by giving them the 
calm of the bird's motion, and shade of the bird's 
plume: — and after all, it is well for us, if, when 
even for God's best mercies, and in His temples 
marble-built, we think that, ''with angels and 
archangels, and all the company of Heaven, we 
laud and magnify His glorious name " — well for us, 
if our attempt be not only an iusult, and His ears 
open rather to the inarticulate and unintended 
praise, of "the Swallow, twittering from her straw- 
built shed." — Loire's Meinie, p, 53. 

I never watch the bird for a moment Mdthout 
finding myself in some fresh puzzle out of which 
there is no clue in the scientific books. I want to 
know, for instance, how the bird turns. What 
does it do with one wing, what with the other ? 
Fancy the pace that has to be stopped; the force of 
bridle-hand put out in an instant. Fancy how the 
wings must bend with the strain ; what need there 
must be for the x^erfect aid and work of every 
feature in them. There is a problem for you, stu- 
dents of mechanics — How does a swallow turn ? . . . 
Given the various projiortions of weight and wing; 
the conditions of possible increase of muscular force 
and quill-strength in proportion to size ; and the 
different objects and circumstances of flight — you 
have a series of exquisitely complex problems, and 
exquisitely perfect solutions, which the life of the 
youngest among you cannot be long enough to 
read through so much as once, and of which the 
future infinitudes of human life, however granted 
or extended, never will be fatigued in admiration. 
. . . The mystery of its dart remains always inex- 
plicable to me ; no eye can trace the bending of 
bow that sends that living arrow. — Love's Meinie, 
pp. Z'}, 43, 40. 



432 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 



CHAPTER II: ' 

Botany.* 

It is better to know the habits of one plant than 
the names of a thousand ; and wiser to be ha^opily 
faniihar with those that groAv in the nearest field, 
than arduously cognizant of all that plume the 
isles of the Pacific, or illumine the Mountains of 
the Moon. — Proserpina, p. 139. 

Ruskin's Tribulations i:\' the Study of Bot- 
AiSTY. — Balfour's Manual of Botany. "Sap" — yes, 
at last. '' Article 257. Course of fluids in exogenous 
stems." I don't care about the course just now : 
I want to kno^y where the fluids come from. " If a 
plant be plunged into a weak solution of acetate 
of lead.' — I don't in the least Avant to know what 
happens. "From the minuteness of the tissue, it 
is not easy to determine the vessels through which 
the sap moves." Who said it was ? If it had been 
easy, I should have done it myself. " Changes 
take place in the composition of the sap in its up- 
ward course." I dare say; but I don't know yet 
what its composition is before it begins going up. 
"The Elaborated Sap by Mr. Schultz has been 
called latex.'''' I wish Mr. Schultz were in a hogs- 
head of it, with the top on. " On account of these 
movements in the latex, the laticiferous vessels 
have been denominated cinenchymatous." I do 
not venture to print the expressions which I here 
mentally make use of. — Proserpina, p. 37. 

A sudden doubt troubles me, whether all poi:>pies 
have two i)etals smaller than the other two. 
Whereupon I take down an excellent little school- 
book on botany — the best I have yet found, think- 
ing to be told quicklj^; and I find a great deal about 
opium; and, apropos of opium, that the juice of 

^ See also Part II., Chapter II. 



SCIENCE— BO TA NY. 433 

common celandine is of a bright orange color ; and 
I pause for a bewildered five minutes, wondering 
if a celandine is a poppy, and how many petals 
it has: going on again — because I must, without 
making up my mind, on either question — I am told 
to " observe the floral receptacle of the Calif ornian 
genus Eschscholtzia." Now I can't observe any- 
thing of the sort, and I don't want to ; and I wish 
California and all that's in it were at the deepest 
bottom of the Pacific. Next I am told to compare 
the popi:>y and water-lily; and I can't do that, 
neither — though I should like to ; and there's the 
end of the article ; and it never tells me whether 
one pair of petals is always smaller that the other, 
or not. — Proserpina, pp. 53, 54. 

Perfume, or Essence, is the general term for the 
condensed dew of a vegetable vapor, Avhich is with 
grace and fitness called the "being" of a plant, 
because its properties are almost always character- 
istic of the species ; and it is not, like leaf tissue or 
wood fibre, approximately the same material in 
different shapes ; but a separate element in each 
family of flovv^ers, of a mysterious, delightful, ordan- 
gerous influence, logically inexplicable, chemically 
inconstructible, and wholly, in dignity of nature, 
above all modes and faculties of form. . . . Yet I 
find in the index to Dr. Lindley's Introduction to 
Botany — seven hundred pages of close print — not 
one of the four words "Volatile," "Essence," 
"Scent," or "Perfume." I examine the index to 
Gray's Structural and Systematic Botany, with pre- 
cisely the same success. I next consult Professors 
Balfour and Grindon, and am met by the sanje 
dignified silence. Finally, I think over the possi- 
ble chances in French, and try in Figuier's indices 
to the Histoire des Plantes for " Odeur " — no such 
word! "Parfum" — no such word ! "Essence" — 
no such word ! " Encens " — no such word ! I try 
at last " Pois de Senteur," at a venture, and am re- 
ferred to a page which describes their going to sleep. 
— Proserpina, pp. 241, 243. 



43i A BUS KIN' ANTHOLOGY. 

Botanic Noivienclature. — Perhaps nothing is 
more carious in the liistory of the human mind than 
tlie way in which the science of botany has become 
oppressed by nomenclature. Here is perhaps the 
lirst question which an intelligent child would think 
of asking about a tree : " Mamma, how does it make 
its trunk?" and you may open one botanical work 
after another, and good ones too, and by sensible 
men — you shall not find this child's question fairly 
put, nmch less fairly answered. You will be told 
gravely that a stem has received many names, such 
as culmus, stipes, and truncus ; that twigs were 
once called flagella, but are now called raiinili ; 
and that Mr. Link calls a straight stem, with 
branches on its sides, a caulis excurrens; and a stem, 
w'hich at a certain distance above the earth breaks 
out into irregular ramifications, a caulis delique- 
scens. All thanks and honor be to Mr. Link ! But 
at this moment, Avhen Ave want to know wliy one 
stem breaks out "at a certain distance," and the 
other not at all, Ave find no great help in those 
splendid excurrencies and deliquescencies. — Modern 
Painters, V., p. 65. 

On heat and force, life is inseparably dependent ; 
and I believe, also, on a form of substance, Avhich 
the philosophers call " jDrotoplasm." I Avish they 
AA'^ould use English instead of Greek Avords. When 
I Avant to know Avhy a leaf is green, they tell me it 
is colored by "chlorophyll," Avhicli at first sounds 
very instructive; but if they would only say plainly 
that a leaf is colored green by a thing Avhich is 
called " green leaf," Ave should see more precisely 
hoAv far we had ^ot.— Athena, p. 51. 

Why is Cinnamox aromatic axd Sugar saa^eet ? 
—It is of no use to determine, by microscope or 
retort, that cinn-amon is made of cells Avith so many 
Avails, or grape-juice of molecules Avith so many 
sides; — AA'e are just as far as ever from understand- 
ing Avliy these particular interstices should be 
aromatic, and these special paralielopipeds exhilar- 
ating, as we were in the savagely unscientific days 



SCIENCE— BOTANY. 435 

when we could only see with our eyes, and smell 
with our noses. — Proserpina, p. 159. 

The Biographies op Plants.— Our scientific 
botanists are occupied in microscopic investigatious 
of structure which have not hitherto completely 
explained to us either the origin, the energy, or the 
course of the saj) ; and which, however subtle or 
successful, bear to the real natural history of plants 
only the relation that anatomy and organic chem- 
istry bear to the history of men. . . . What we 
especially need at present for educational purposes 
is to know, not the anatomy of plants, but their 
biography — how and where they live and die, their 
tempers, benevolences, malignities, distresses, and 
virtues. — Lectures on Art, p. 70. 

Sap. — At every pore of its surface, under ground 
and above, the plant in the spring absorbs moist- 
ure, which instantly disperses itself through its 
whole system *' by means of some permeable quality 
of the membranes of the cellular tissue invisible to 
our eyes even by the most jDOwerful glasses ; " in 
this way subjected to the vital power of the tree, it 
becomes sap, properly so called, v.diich passes down- 
wards through this cellular tissue, slowly and 
secretly ; and then upwards, through the great 
vessels of the tree, violently, stretching out the 
supple twigs of it as you see a flaccid water-pipe 
swell and move when the cock is turned to fill it. 
And the tree becomes literally a fountain, of which 
the springing streamlets are clothed with new- woven 
garments of green tissue, and of which the silver 
spray stays in the sky, — a spray, now, of leaves. — 
Froserinna, p. 38. 

The Koot of a Plant.— The feeding function of 
the root is of a very delicate and discriminating 
kind, needing much searching and mining among 
the dust, to find what it wants. If it only wanted 
water, it could get most of that by spreading in 
mere soft senseless limbs, like sponge, as far, and 
as far down, as it could — but to get the salt out of 
the earth it has to sift all the earth, and taste and 



436 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

touch every grain of it that it can, with fine fibres. 
And therefore a root is not at all a merely passive 
sponge or absorbing thing, but an infinitely subtle 
tongue, or tasting and eating thing. That is why 
it is always so fibrous and divided and entangled in 
the clinging earth. — Proserpina, p. 26. 

The FiiOWER the Fixal Cause of the Seed.— 
The Spirit in the plant — that is to say, its power of 
gathering dead matter out of the wreck round it, 
and shaping it into its own chosen shape — is of 
course strongest at the moment of its flowering, for 
it then not only gathers, but forms, with the great- 
est energy. . . . Only, with respect to plants, as 
animais, Ave are wrong in speaking as if the object 
of this strong life were only the bequeathing of it- 
self. The flower is the end or proper object of the 
seed, not the seed of the flower. The reason for 
seeds is that flowers may be; not the reason of flow- 
ers that seeds may be. The flower itself is the creat- 
ure which the spirit makes ; only, in connection 
Avith its perfectness, is placed the giA^ng birth to its 
successor. ... 

The main fact, then, about a floAver is that it is 
the part of the plant's form dcA'eloped at the mo- 
ment of its intensest life : and this inner rapture is 
usually marked externally for us by the flush of one 
or more of the i^rimary colors. What the character 
of the fioAver .shall be, dejDends entirely upon the 
portion of the plant into A\diich this rapture of spirit 
has been put. Sometimes the life is put into its 
outer sheath, and then the outer sheath becomes 
AAdiite and pure, and full of strength and grace; 
sometimes the life is put into the common leaA'^es, 
just under the blossom, and they become scarlet or 
liurple; sometimes the life is put into the stalks of 
the fioAver, and i\\ej Hush blue; sometimes into its 
outer enclosure or calyx; mostly into its inner cup; 
but, in all cases, the presence of the strongest life is 
asserted by characters in AA'hich the human sight 
takes pleasure, and Avhicli seem prepared with dis- 
tinct reference to us. or rather, bear, in being de- 



SCIENCE— BOTANY. 437 

ligiitful, evidence of having been produced by the 
power of the same spirit as our own. — Athena, p. 54. 

Fruit. — I find it convenient in this volume, and 
wish I had tliouglit of the expedient before, wlien- 
ever I get into a difficulty, to leave the reader to 
work it out. He will perhaps, therefore, be so good 
as to dafine fruit for himself. — Modern PoAnters, 
v., p. 112. 

All the most perfect fruits are developed /ro??i ex- 
quisite forms either of foliage or fioioer. The vine 
leaf, in its generally decorative power, is the most 
important, both in life and in art, of all that shade 
the habitations of men. The olive leaf is, without 
any rival, the most beautiful of the leaves of timber 
trees ; and its blossom, though minute, of extreme 
beauty. The apple is essentially the fruit of the 
rose, and the peach of her only rival in her own 
color. The cherry and orange blossom are the two 
types of floral snow. — Proserpina, p. 163. 

An Orange. — In the orange, the fount of fragrant 
juice is interposed between the seed and the husk. 
It is wholly independent of both; the aurantine 
rind, with its white lining and divided compart- 
ments, is the true husk ; the orange pips are the 
true seeds ; and the eatable part of the fruit is 
formed between them, in clusters of delicate little 
flasks, as if a fairy's store of scented wine iiad been 
laid up by her in the hollow of a chestnut shell, be- 
tween the nut and rind ; and then the green changed 
to gold. — Proserpina, 155. 

The Poppy. — 1 have in my hand a small i-ed 
poppy which I gathered on Whit Sunday on the 
palace of i\\e Caesars. It is an intensely simple, in- 
tensely floral, flower. All silk and flame: a scarlet 
cup, perfect-edged all round, seen among the wild 
grass far away, like a burning coal fallen from 
Heaven's altars. You cannot have a more complete, 
a more stainless, type of flower absolute; inside and 
outside, all flower. No sparing of color anywhere — 
no outside coarseness — no interior secrecies; open as 
the sunshine that creates it ; flne-finished on both 



438 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

sides, down to tlie extremest point of insertion on 
its narrow stalk; and robed in the purple of tlie 
Caesars. Gather a green poppy bud, just when it 
show^s the scarlet line at its side; break it open and 
unpack the poppy. The whole flower is there com- 
plete in size and color; its stamens full-grown, but 
all packed so closely that the fine silk of the petals 
is crushed into a million of shapeless Avrinkles. 
When the flower opens, it seems a deliverance from 
torture : the two imprisoning green leaves are 
shaken to the ground; the aggrieved corolla smooths 
itself in the sun, and comforts itself as it can; but 
remains visibly crushed and hurt to the end of its 
days. — Proserpina, pp. 52, 58. 

The Onion and the Garlic as Ethical Fac- 
tors. — The star-group, of the squills, garlics, and 
onions, has always caused me great wonder. I 
cannot understand why its beauty, and serviceable- 
ness, should have been associated with the rank 
scent which has been really among the most pow- 
erful means of degrading peasant life, and separ- 
ating it from that of the higher classes. — Athena, 
p. 67. 

The Oat. — Here is the oat germ — after the wheat, 
most vital of divine gifts; and assuredhs in days to 
come, fated to grow on many a naked rock in 
hitherto lifeless lands, over which the glancing 
sheaves of it will shake sweet treasure of innocent 
gold. And who shall tell us how they grow^; and 
the fashion of their rustling pillars — bent, and again 
erect, at every breeze. Fluted shaft or clustered 
pier, how poor of art, beside this grass-shaft — built, 
first to sustain the food of men, then to be strewn 
under their feet ! — Proserpina, p. 106. 

The Martyr Moss.— You remember, I doubt not, 
how often in gathering what most invited gather- 
ing, of deep green, starry, perfectly soft and living 
wood-moss, you found it fall asunder in your hand 
into multitudes of separate threads^ each with its 
bright green crest, and long root of blackness. 
That blackness at the root — though only so notable 



SCIENCE -EOT ANY. 439 

ill this wood-moss and collateral species, is indeed 
a general character of the mosses, Avitli rare excep- 
tions. It is their funeral bkickness ; — that, I per- 
ceive, is the way the moss-leaves die. They do not 
fall — they do not visibly decay. But they decay in- 
visibly, in continual secession, beneath the ascend- 
ing crest. They rise to form that crest, all green 
and bright, and take the light and air from those 
out of which they grev.^; and those, their ancestors, 
darken and die slowly, and at last become a mass 
of mouldering ground. In fact, as I loerceive far- 
ther, their final duty is so to die. The main work 
of other leaves is in their life — but these have to 
form the earth out of which all other leaves are 
to grow. Not to cover the rocks with golden velvet 
only, but to fill their crannies with the dark earth, 
through which nobler creatures shall one day seek 
their being. — Proserinna, p. 17. 

Leaves ribbed aj^d undulated. — When a leaf 
is to be spread wide, like the burdock, it is sup- 
ported by a framework of extending ribs like a 
Gothic roof. The supporting function of these is 
geometrical ; every one is constructed like the gir- 
ders of a bridge, or beams of a floor, with all man- 
ner of science in the distribution of their substance 
in the section, for narrow and deep strength; and 
the shafts are mostly hollow. But when the ex- 
tending space of a leaf is to be enriched with fulness 
of folds, and become beautiful in Avrinkles, this 
may be done either by pure undulation as of a 
liquid current along the leaf edge, or by sharp 
" drawing" — or " gathering" I believe ladies would 
call it— and stitching of the edges together. And 
this stitching together, if to be done very strongly, 
is done round a bit of stick, as a sail is reefed round 
a mast; and this bit of stick needs to be compactly, 
not geometrically strong; its function is essentially 
that of starch — not to hold the le?uf up olf the 
ground against gravity; but to stick the edges out, 
stiffly, in a crimped frill. And in beautiful work 
of this kind, which we are meant to study, the stays 



440 A JiUSKIN ANTHOLOGY, 

of the leaf — or stay-bones — are finished, off very 
sharply and exquisitely at the points ; and indeed 
so much so, that the^ x^rick our fingers when Ave 
touch them ; for they are not at all meant to be 
touched, but eidmii'ed.—Froserjnna, pi^. 80, 81. 



CHAPTER III. 

Minerals. 

Crystals. — The crystalline power is essentially a 
styptic powder, and wherever the earth is torn, it 
heals and binds; nay, the torture and grieving of 
the earth seem necessary to bring out its full energy; 
for you only find the crystalline living power fully 
in action, where the rents and faults are deep and 
many. — Ethics of the Dust, p. 114. 

The mineral crj^stals group themselves neither in 
succession, nor in sympathy; but great and small 
recklessly strive for place, and deface or distort each 
other as they gather into opponent asperities. The 
confused crowd fills the rock cavity, hanging to- 
gether in a glittering, yet sordid heap, in which 
nearly every crystal, owing to their vain conten- 
tion, is imperfect, or imiDure. Here and there one, 
at the cost and in defiance of the rest, rises into un- 
warped shape or unstained clearness. — Modern 
Painters, V., i3. 48. 

The goodness of crystals consists chiefly in purity 
of substance, and perfectness of form : but those 
are rather the effects of their goodness, than the 
goodness itself. The inherent virtues of the crys- 
tals, resulting in these outer conditions, might 
really seem to be best described in the words we 
should use respecting living creatures — "force of 
heart" and "steadiness of purpose." There seem 
to be in some crystals, from the beginning, an un- 
conquerable purity of vital power, and strength of 
crystal sj)irit. Whatever dead substance, unaccep- 
tant of this energy, comes in their way, is either 



SCIENCE—MINERALS. 441 

rejected, or forced to take some beautiful subordi- 
nate form ; the purity of tlie crystal remains unsul- 
lied, and every atom of it bright with coherent 
energy. 

Then the second condition is, that from the begin- 
ning of its whole structure, a fine crystal seems to 
have determined that it will be of a certain size and 
of a certain shape ; it persists in this plan, and 
completes it. Here is a iDerfect crystal of quartz 
for you. It is of an unusual form, and one which 
it might seem very difficult to build— a pyramid 
with convex sides, composed of other minor pyra- 
mids. But there is not a flaw in its contour through- 
out; not one of its myriads of component sides but 
is as bright as a jeweller's facetted work (and far 
finer, if you saw it close). The crystal points are as 
sharp as javelins ; their edges Avill cut glass with 
a touch. Anything more resolute, consummate, 
determinate in form, cannot be conceived. Here, 
on the other hand, is a crystal of the same substance, 
in a perfectly simple type of form — a plain six sided 
jn-ism ; but from its base to its point, — and it is 
nine inches long, — ithasnever for one instant made 
up its mind what thickness it will have. It seems 
to have begun by making itself as thick as it 
thought possible with the quantity of material at 
command. Still not being as thick as it would like 
to be, it has clumsily glued on more substance at 
one of its sides. Then it has thinned itself, in a 
panic of economy; then putfed itself out again ; 
then starved one side to enlarge another ; then 
warped itself quite out of its first line. Opaque, 
rough-surfaced, jagged on the edge, distorted in the 
spine, it exhibits a quite human image of decrepi- 
tude and dishonor ; but the worst of all the signs 
of its decay and helplessness, is that half-way up, a 
parasite crystal, smaller, but just as sickly, has 
rooted itself in the side of the larger one, eating out 
a cavity round its root, and then growing back- 
wards, or downwards, contrary to tlie direction of 
the main crystal. Yet I cannot trace the least 
dilference in purity of substance between the first 



442 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

most noble stone, and this ignoble and dissolute 
one. The impurity of the last is in its will, or 
want of will. — Ethics of the Dust, p. 58. 

The Marbles.— The soft white sediments of the 
sea draw themselves, in process of time, into smooth 
knots of sphered symmetry; burdened and strained 
under increase of pressure, they pass into a nascent 
marble ; scorched by fervent heat, they brighten 
and blanch into the snowy rock of Paros and 
Carrara. — Ethics of the Dust, p. 140. 

These stones, which men have been cutting into 
slabs, for thousands of years, to ornament their 
principal buildings with, — and which, under the 
general name of "marble," have been the delight 
of the eyes, and the Avealth of architecture, among 
all civilized nations — are precisely those on which 
the signs and brands of these earth-agonies have 
been chiefly struck; and there is not a purple vein 
nor flaming zone in them, which is not the record 
of their ancient torture. — Ethics of the Dust, p. 116. 

The substance appears to have been prepared 
expressly in order to afford to human art a perfect 
means of carrying out its purposes. They are of 
exactly the necessary hardness — neither so soft as 
to be incapable of maintaining themselves in deli- 
cate forms, nor so hard as always to require a blow 
to give effect to the sculptor's touch ; the mere 
pressure of his chisel produces a certain effect upon 
them. The color of the white varieties is of exquis- 
ite delicacy, owing to the partial translucency 
of the pure rock ; and it has always appeared to 
me a most wonderful ordinance — one of the most 
marked pieces of purpose in the creation — that all 
the variegated kinds should be comparatively 
opaque, so as to set off the color on the surface, 
while the white, which if it had been opaque would 
have looked somewhat coarse (as, for instance, 
common chalk does), is rendered just translucent 
enough to give an impression of extreme purity, 
but not so translucent as to interfere in the least 



SCIENCE— MINERALS. M3 

with the distinctness of any forms into wliich it is 
wrought- 

Tlie colors of variegated marbles are also for the 
most part very beautiful, especially those composed 
of purple, amber, and green, with white ; and 
there seems to be something notably attractive to 
the human mind in the vague and veined laby- 
rinths of ^their arrangements. They are farther 
marked as the prepared material for human work 
by the dependence of their beauty on smoothness 
of surface ; for their veins are usually seen but 
dimly in the native rock ; and the colors they 
assume under the action of weather are inferior to 
those of the crystallines : it is not until wrought and 
polished by man that they show their character. 
Finally, they do not decompose. The exterior sur- 
face is sometimes destroyed by a sort of mechanical 
disruption of its outer flakes, but rarely to the ex- 
tent in which such action takes place in other 
rocks ; and the most delicate sculptures, if executed 
in good marble, will remain for ages undeterio- 
rated. — Modern Faiiiters, IV., p. 141. 

Minerals and Minerals.— When I was a boy I 
used to care about pretty stones. I got some 
Bristol diamonds at Bristol, and some dog-tooth 
spar in Derbyshire ; my whole collection had cost 
perhaps three half-crowns, and was worth consider- 
ably less ; and I knew nothing whatever, rightly, 
about any single stone in it ; — could not even spell 
their names: but words cannot tell the joy they 
used to give me. Now, I have a collection of min- 
erals worth, perhaps, from two to three thousand 
l^ounds ; and I know more about some of them 
than most other people. But I am not a whit liaii- 
pier, either for my knowledge, or possessions, for 
other geologists dispute my theories, to my grievous 
indignation and discontentment ; and I am miser- 
able about all my best specimens, because there are 
better in the British Museum. — Fors Clamgera. 

The Colors of Clay, Lime, and Flint.— Nature 
seisms to have set herself to make these three sub- 



444 A BC/SKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

stances as interesting to ns, and as beautiful for us, 
as she can. The clay, being a soft and changeable 
substance, she doesn't take much pains about, as 
we have seen, till it is baked ; she brings the color 
into it only when it receives a permanent form. 
But the limestone and flint she paints, in her own 
Avay, in their native state : and her object in paint- 
ing them seems to be much the same as in her 
painting of flowers ; to draw us, careless and idle 
human creatures, to watch her a little, and see 
what she is about — that being on the whole good 
for us, her children. For Nature is always carry- 
ing on very strange work Avith this limestone and 
flint of hers : laying down beds of them at the bot- 
tom of the sea ; building islands out of the sea ; 
filling chinks and veins in mountains with curious 
treasures ; petrifying mosses, and trees, and shells; 
in fact, carrying on all sorts of business, subter- 
ranean or submarine, which it would be highly 
desirable for us, who profit and live by it, to notice 
as it goes on. And apparently to lead us to do this, 
she makes picture-books for us of limestone and 
flint ; and tempts us, like foolish children as we 
are, to read her books by the pretty colors in them. 
The pretty colors in her limestone-books form those 
variegated marbles wdiich all mankind have taken 
delight to iDolish and build with froui the beginning 
of time ; and the pretty colors in her flint-books 
form those agates, jaspers, cornelians, bloodstones, 
onyxes, cairngorms, chrysoprases, which men have 
in like manner taken delight to cut, and iDolish, 
and make ornaments of, from the beginning of 
time ; and yet, so much of babies are they, and so 
fond of looking at the pictures instead of reading 
the book, that I question whether, after six thou- 
sand years of cutting and x^oiishing there are above 
two or three people out of any given hundred, who 
know, or care to know, how a bit of agate or a bit 
of marble was made, or i^ainted. 

How it was made, may not be always very easy to 
say ; but wath what it was painted there is no man- 
ner of question. All those beautiful violet veinings 



SCIENCE— MINERALS. 445 

and variegations of the marbles of Sicily and Spain, 
the glowing orange and amber colors of those of 
Siena, the deep russet of the Rosso antico, and the 
blood-color of all the precious jaspers that enrich 
the temples of Italy ; and, finally, all the lovely 
transitions of tint in the pebbles of Scotland and 
the Rhine, which form, though not the most pre- 
cious, by far the most interesting portion of our 
modern jewellers' work ; — all these are painted by 
I nature with this one material only, variously pro- 
|\ portioned and applied— the oxide of iron that stains 
► your Tunbridge springs.— jT/ie Two Paths, p. 110. 

C OJiPETiTio^^^ vs. Co-OPERATiox.— Exclusive of 
animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a more abso- 
lute tyjje of impurity, than the mud or slime of a 
damp, over-trodden path, in the outskirts of a 
manufacturing tov/n. I do not say mud of the 
road, because that is mixed with animal refuse; but 
take merely an ounce or two of the blackest slime 
of a beaten footpath, on a rainy day, near a manu- 
facturing town. That slime we shall find in most 
cases composed of clay (orbrickdust, which is burnt 
clay), mixed with soot, a little sand and water. All 
these elements are at helpless war with each other, 
and destroy reciprocally each other's nature and 
power : competing and fighting for place at every 
tread of your foot ; sand squeezing out clay, and 
clay squeezing out water, and soot meddling every- 
where, and defiling the whole. Let us suppose that 
this ounce of mud is left in perfect rest, and that 
its elements gather together, like to like, so that 
their atoms n]ay get into the closest relations 
possible. 

Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of all foreign 
substance, it gradually becomes a white earth, 
already very beautiful, and fi^ with help of con- 
gealing fire, to be made into finest porcelain, and 
painted on, and be kept in kings' palaces. But 
such artificial consistence is not its best. Leave it 
still quiet, to follow its own instinct of unity, and 
it becomes, not only vv'hite but clear ; not only 



446 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

clear, but hard ; not only clear and hard, Lut so 
set that it can deal with light in a wonderful way, 
and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays only, re- 
fusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire. 

Such being the consummation of the clay, we give 
similar permission of quiet to the sand. It also be- 
comes, first, a white earth ; then proceeds to grow 
clear and hard, and at last arranges itself in mys- 
terious, infinitely fine jparallel lines, which have the 
power of reflecting, not merely the blue rays, but 
the blue, green, purple, and red rays, in the great- 
est beauty in wdiich they can be seen through any 
hard material whatsoever. We call it then an opal. 

In next order the soot sets to work. It cannot 
make itself white at first ; but, instead of being dis- 
couraged, tries harder and harder ; and comes out 
clear at last ; and the hardest thing in the world : 
and for the blackness that it had, obtains in ex- 
change the power of reflecting all the rays of the 
sun at once, in the vividest blaze that any solid 
thing can shoot. We call it then a diamond. 

Last of all, the water purifies, or unites itself ; 
contented enough if it only reach the form of a dew- 
drop ; but if we insist on its proceeding to a more 
perfect consistence, it crystallizes into the shape of 
a star. And, for the ounce of slime which we had 
by political economy of competition, we have, by 
political economy of co-operation, a sapphire, an 
opal, and a diamond, set in the midst of a star of 
snow. — Modern Painters, V., pp. 176, 177. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Clouds. 

All clouds are so opaque that, however delicate 
they may be, you never see one through another. 
Six feet depth of them, at a little distance, will 
wholly veil the darkest mountain edge. . . . And 
this opacity is, nevertheless, obtained without 



SCIENCE - CL UBS. 447 

destroying the gift they have of letting broken 
light through them, so that, between lis and the 
sun, they may become golden fieecos, and float as 
fields of light.— i¥orier?^ Painters, V., pp. 137, 138. 

All lovely clouds, remember, are quiet clouds — • 
not merely quiet in appearance, because of their 
greater height and distance, but quiet actually, 
fixed for hours, it may be, in the same form and 
place. I have seen a fair-weather cloud high over 
Coniston Old Man — not on the hill, observe, bat a 
vertical mile above it— stand motionless, changeless, 
for twelve hours together. From four o'clock in 
the afternoon of one day I watched it through the 
night by the north twilight, till the dawn struck it 
with full crimson, at four of the following July 
morning. — Art of England, p. 105. 

OuTLixixa A Cloud. — How is a cloud outlined ? 
Granted whatever you choose to ask, concerning its 
material, or its aspect, its loftiness and luminous- 
ness— how of its limitation ? What hews it into a 
heap, or spins it into a web ? Cold, it is usually 
shapeless, I suppose, extending over large spaces 
equally, or with gradual diminution. You cannot 
have in the open air, angles, and wedges, and coils, 
and cliffs, of cold. Yet the vapor stops suddenly, 
sharp and steep as a rock, or thrusts itself across 
the gates of heaven in likeness of a brazen bar ; or 
braids itself in and out, and across and across, like 
a tissue of tapestry; or falls into ripples, like sand; 
or into waving shreds and tongues, as fire. (3n 
what anvils and wheels is the vapor pointed, twisted, 
hammered, whirled, as the potter's clay ? By what 
hands is the incense of the sea built U]) into domes 
of marble 1— Modern Painters, V., p. 134. 

Cloud Lustres.— The gilding to our eyes of a 
burnished cloud depends, I believe, at least for a 
measure of its lustre, upon the angle at which the 
rays incident upon it are reflected to the eye, just 
as much as the glittering of the sea beneath it — or 
the sparkling of the windows of the houses on the 
»\\ove.—iStorm Cloud, Lect. II. 



448 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Attached Clouds. — The opposed conditions of 
the higher and lower orders of cloud, Mitli the bal- 
anced intermediate one, are beautifully seen on 
mountain sumiiiits of rock or earth. On snowy ones 
they are far more complex : but on rock summits 
there are three distinct forms of attached cloud in 
serene weather ; the first that of cloud veil laid 
over them, and falling in folds through their 
ravines (the obliquely descending clouds of the 
entering chorus in Aristoi^hanes) ; secondly, the 
ascending cloud, which develops itself loosely and 
independently as it rises, and does not attach itself 
to the hillside, while the falling veil cloud clings to 
it close all the way down ; — and lastly the throned 
cloud, which rests indeed on the mountain summit, 
with its base, but rises high above into the sky, con- 
tinually changing its outlines, but holding its seat 
perhaps all day long. — Storm Cloud, Lect. II. 

Cirrus Clouds. — Their chief characters are — 
First, Symmetry : They are nearly always ar- 
ranged in some definite and evident order, common- 
ly in long ranks reaching sometimes from the zen- 
ith to the horizon, each rank composed of an infinite 
number of transverse bars of about the same length, 
each bar thickest in the middle, and terminating in 
a traceless vaporous point at each side ; the ranks 
are in the direction of the wind, and the bars of 
course at right angles to it ; these latter are com- 
monly slightly bent in the middle. — Secondly, Sharp- 
ness of Edge : The edges of the bars of the upper 
clouds which are turned to the wind, are often the 
sharpest which the sky shows ; no outline what- 
ever of any other kind of cloud, however marked 
and energetic, ever approaches the delicate decis- 
ion of these edges. — Thirdly, Multitude : The deli- 
cacy of these vapors is sometimes carried into such 
an infinity of division, that no other sensation of 
number that the earth or heaven can give is so 
impressive. — Fourthly, Purity of Color : They are 
coniposed of the purest aqueous vapor, free from all 
foulness of earthly gases, and of this in the lightest 



SCIENCE— CLOUDS. 44» 

and most ethereal state in which it can be, to be 
visible. . . . Their colors are more pure and vivid, 
and their white less sullied than those of any other 
clouds. — Lastly, Variety : Variety is never so con- 
spicuous, as when it is united with symmetry. The 
perpetual change of form in other clouds, is monot- 
onous in its very dissimilarity, nor is difference 
striking- where no coniiection is implied ; but if 
through a range of barred clouds, crossing half the 
heaven, all governed by the same forces and falling 
into one general form, there be yet a luarked and 
evident dissimilarity between each member of the 
great mass — one more finely drawn, the next more 
delicately moulded, the next more gracefully bent 
— each broken into differently modelled and var- 
iously numbered groups, the variety is doubly 
striking, because contrasted with the perfect sym- 
metry of which it forms a part. — Modern Painters, 
I., pp. 290-293. 

The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteejn^th Cei^- 
TURY. — The first time I recognized the clouds 
brought by the plague- wind as distinct in character 
was in walking back from Oxford, after a hard day's 
work, to Abingdon, in the early spring of 1871. It 
would take too long to give you any account this 
evening of the particulars which dreAvmy attention 
to them ; but during the following months I had 
too frequent ojiportunities of verifying my first 
thoughts of them, and on the first of July in that 
year wrote the description of them which begins the 
Fors Claijigera of August, thus : — 

" It is the first of July, and I sit down to write by 
the dismalest light that ever yet I wrote by; name- 
ly, the light of this mid-summer morning, in mid- 
England (Matlock, Derbyshire), in the year 1871. 
For the sky is covered with grey clouds ; — not rain- 
cloud, but a dry black veil, Avhich no ray of sun- 
shine can pierce ; x^^^'^^y diffused in mist, feeble 
mist, enough to make distant objects unintelligible, 
yet without any substance, or wreathing, or color 
of its own. And everywhere the leaves of the trees 
are shaking fitfully, as they do before a thunder- 



450 A IIUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

storm ; only not violently, but enough to show the 
passing to and fro of a strange, bitter, blighting 
wind. Dismal enough, had it been the first morn- 
ing of its kind that summer had sent. But during 
all this spring, in London, and at Oxford, through 
meagre March, through changelessly sullen April, 
through despondent May, and darkened June, 
morning after morning has come grey-shrouded thus. 
" And it is a new thing to me, and a very dreadful 
one. I am fifty years old, and more ; and since I 
Avas five, have gleaned the best hours of my life in 
the sun of spring and summer mornings ; and I 
never saw such as these, till now. And the scien- 
tific men are busy as ants, examining the sun, and 
the moon, and the seven stars, and can tell me all 
about them, I believe, by this time ; and how they 
move, and what they are made of. 

" And I do not care, for my part, two cojiper 
spangles how they move, nor Avhat they are made 
of. I can't move them any other way than they go, 
nor make them of anything else, better than they 
are made. But I would care much and give much, 
if I could be told where this bitter wind comes from, 
and what it is made of. For, perhaps, with fore- 
thought, and fine laboratory science, one might 
make it of something else. 

"It looks partly as if It were made of poison- 
ous smoke ; very possibly it may be : there are 
at least two hundred furnace chimneys in a 
square of two miles on every side of me. But mere 
smoke would not blow to and fro in that wild way. 
It looks more to me as if it were made of dead men's 
souls — such of them as are not gone yet where they 
have to go, and may be Hitting hither and thith- 
er, doubting, themselves, of the fittest place for 
them. ..." 

Since that Midsummer day, my attention, how- 
ever otherwise occui^ied, has never relaxed in its 
record of the phenomena characteristic of the 
plague-wind; and I now define for you, as briefly 
as possible, the essential signs of it : 

1. It is a wind of darkness: — all the former condi- 



SCIENCE-CLOUDS. 461 

tions of tormenting Avinds, whether from the north 
or east, were more or less capable of co-existing 
with sunlight, and often with steady and bright 
sunlight ; but whenever, and wherever the j^lague- 
Avind blows, be it but for t&n minutes, the sky is 
darkened instantly. — 2. It is a malignant quality of 
Avind unconnected Avith any one quarter of the com- 
pass ; it blows indifferently from all, attaching its 
own bitterness and malice to the Avorst characters 
of the proper winds of each quarter. It Avill blow 
either Avith drenching rain, or dry rage, from the 
south — Avitli ruinous blasts from the Avest— Avlth 
bitterest chills from the north — and with venomous 
blight from the east. Its oAvn favorite quarter, 
however, is the south-Avest, so that it is distinguished 
in its malignity equally from the Bise of ProA^ence, 
Avhich is a north Avind always, and from our own 
old friend, the east.— 3. It alwaj^s bloAvs tremulously y 
making the leaves of the trees shudder as if they 
Avere all aspens, but Avith a peculiar fitfulnesa 
Avhich gives them — and I Avatch them this moment 
as I Avrite — an expression of anger as well as of fear 
and distress. You may see the kind of quivering, 
and hear the ominous Avhimpering, in the gusts 
that i^recede a great thunder-stoj-m ; but plague- 
wind is more panic-struck, and feverish ; and its 
sound is a hiss instead of a Avail. — 4. Not only 
tremulous at every moment, it is also intermittent 
Avith a rapidity quite unexampled in former Aveather. 
There are, indeed, days— and Aveeks, on Avhicli it 
blows Avithout cessation, and is as inevitable as the 
Gulf Stream ; but also there are days when it is 
contending with healthy Aveather, and on such 
days it Avill remit for half an hour, and the sun will 
begin to show itself, and then the Avind Avill come 
back and cover the Avhole sky Avith clouds in ten 
uiinutes ; and so on every half-hour, through the 
Avliole day; so that it is often impossible to go on 
Avith any kind of draAving in color, the light being 
nev^er for two seconds the same from morning till 
evening. — 5. It degrades, Avhile it intensifies, ordi- 
nary storm. 



452 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Take the following sequences of accurate descrip- 
tion of tliunderstoim, \vith loiague-wind : 

''June 22, 1876.— Thunderstorm; pitch dark, with 
no blackness — but deep, high, fllthiness of lurid, 
yet not sublimely lurid, smoke-cloud; dense manu- 
facturing mist; fearful squalls of shivery wind, 
making Mr. Severn's sail quiver like a man in a 
fever-fit — all about four, afternoon — but only two 
or three claps of thunder, and feeble, though near, 
flashes. I never saw such a dirty, weak, foul storm. 
It cleared suddenly, after raining all afternoon, at 
half-past eight to nine, into pure, natural wea^ther, 
— low rain-clouds on quite clear, green, w^et hills. 

''August 13, 1879. — Quarter to eight, morning. — 
Thunder returned, all the air collapsed into one 
black fog, the hills invisible, and scarcely visible 
the opposite shore ; heavy rain in short fits, and 
frequent, though less formidable, flashes, and 
shorter thunder. While I have written this sentence 
the cloud has again dissolved itself, like a nasty 
solution in a bottle, with miraculous and unnat- 
ural rapidity, and the hills are in sight again. 
Half-past eight. — Three times light and three times 
dark since last I wrote, and the darkness seeming 
each time as it settles more loathsome, at last stop- 
ping my reading in mere blindness. One lurid 
gleam of Avhite cumulus in upper lead-blue sky, 
seen for half a minute through the sulphuro s 
chimney-pot vomit of blackguardly cloud beneath, 
wdiere its rags were thinnest. 

"August 17, 1879.— Raining in foul drizzle, slow 
and steady; sky pitch-dark, and I just got a little 
light by sitting in the bow-window; diabolic clouds 
over everything : and looking over my kitchen 
garden yesterday, I found it one miserable mass of 
weeds gone to seed, the roses in the liigher garden 
putrefied into brown sponges, feeling like dead 
snails ; and the half-ripe strawberries all rotten at 
the stalks." 

"February 2'},, 1883.— Yesterday a fearfully dark 
mist all afternoon, with steady, south plague-wind 
of the bitterest, nastiest, poisonous blight, and fret- 
ful flutter. I could scarcely stay in the wood for 
the horror of it. To-day, really rather bright blue, 
and bright semi-cumuli, with the frantic Old Man 
blowing sheaves of lancets and chisels across the 
lake — not in strength enough, or whirl enough, to 



SCIENCE—BITS OF THOUGHT. 453 

raise it in spray, but tracing every squall's outline 
in black on the silvery grey waves, and whistling 
meanly, and as if on a flute made of a tile. 

G. And now I come to the most important sign of 
the plague-wind and the plague-cloud : that in 
bringing on their peculiar darkness, they hlanch 
the sun instead of reddening it. . . . I should have 
liked to have blotted down for you a bit of plague- 
cloud ; but Heaven knows, you can see enough of 
it nowadays without any trouble of mine ; and if 
you want, in a hurry, to see what the sun looks like 
through it, you've only to throw a bad half-crown 
into a basin of soap and water. — fitorm-Cloitd, liCct, 
I., pp. 36-35. 



CHAPTER V. 
Bits of Thought, 

Uuskin's First Piece of Published Writij^^g, 
— 1 do not think the causes of the color of trans^ 
parent water have been sufficiently ascertained. I 
do not mean that effect of color which is simply op- 
tical, as the color of the sea, which is regulated by 
the sky above, or the state of tlie atmosi^here ; but 
I mean the settled color of transparent water, which 
has, when analyzed, been found pure. Now, 
copper will tinge water green, and that very 
strongly ; but water thus impregnated will not be 
transparent, and will deposit the copper it holds in 
solution upon any piece of iron which may be 
thrown into it. There is a lake in a defile on the 
north-west flank of Snowdon, Avhjch is supplied by 
a stream, which previously passes over several veins 
of copper : this lake is, of course, of a bright ver^ 
digrise green, but it is not transparent. Now, the 
coloring effect of whicli I speali, is well seen in the 
waters of the Rhone and Rhine. The former of 
these rivers, when it enters the Lake of Geneva, 
after having received the t<'>vrents descending from 



454: A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

the mountains of the Valais, is fouled with mud, or 
white witli the calcareous matter which it holds in 
solution. Having deposited this in the Lake Le- 
man (thereby forming an immense delta), it issues 
from the lake perfectly pure, and flows through the 
streets of Geneva so transparent, that the bottom 
can be seen 20 feet below the surface, yet so blue, 
that you might imagine it to be a solution of indigo. 
In like manner, the Rhine, after purifying itself in 
the Lake of Constance, flows forth, colored of a 
clear green ; and this under all circumstances, and 
in all weathers. It is sometimes said that this arises 
from the torrents whicli supply these rivers gener- 
ally flowing from the glaciers, the green and blue 
color of which may have given rise to this opinion; 
but the color of the ice is purely optical, as the frag- 
ments detached from the mass apjDcar simply white. 
Perhaps some correspondent can afford me some 
information on the subject. — Magazine of Natural 
History, 1834. 

Envy among Scientific Men.— The retardation 
of science by envy is one of the most tremendous 
losses in the economy of the i^resent century. — Unto 
this Last, p. 51. 

RusKix's Opinion of Modern Science, written 
IN 1853. — Tliat modern science, Avith all its addi- 
tions to the comforts of life," and to the fields of ra- 
tional contemplation, has placed the existing races 
of mankind on a higher ijlatform than any that 
preceded them, none can doubt for an instant ; and 
I believe the position in wliich we find ourselves is 
somewhat analogous to that of thoughtful and la- 
borious youth succeeding a restless and heedless 
infancy. — Stones of Venice, HI., ^p. 166. 

Pure Scientific Research never Rewarded. 
—.My ingenious friends, science has no more to do 
with making steaui-engines than v/ith making 
breeches ; though she condescends to heli3 you a 
little in such necessary (or it may be, conceivablj', 
in both cases, sometimes unnecessary) businesses. 



SCIENCE— BITS OF THOUGHT. 455 

Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd peo- 
ple, mostly poor. . . . 

You cannot be simple enough, even in April, to 
think I got my three thousa,nd pounds worth of 
minerals by studying mineralogy ? Not so ; they 
were earned for me by hard labor ; my father's in 
England, and many a sunburnt vineyard-dresser's 
in Spain. — Fors, I., p. 44. 

We are glad enough, indeed, to make our profit 
of science ; we snap uj) anything in the w^ay of a 
scientific bone that has meat on it, eagerly enough; 
but if the scientific man comes for a bone or a crust 
to us, that is another story. — Sesame and Lilies, 
p. 56. 

The Vibrations op the Tympanum.— It is quite 
true that the tympanum of the ear vibrates under 
sound, and that the surface of the water in a ditch 
vibrates too : but the ditch hears nothing for all 
that ; and my hearing is still to me as blessed a 
mystery as ever, and the interval between the ditch 
and me, quite as great. If the trembling sound in 
my ears was once of the marriage-bell which began 
my happiness and is now of the passing-bell wdiich 
ends it, the difference between those two sounds to 
me cannot be counted by the number of concus- 
sions. — Athena, p. 50. 

The Study of Natural History.— For one man 
who is fitted for the study of words, fifty are fitted for 
the study of things, and were intended to have a per- 
petual, simple, and religious delight in watching the 
processes, or admiring the creatures, of the natural 
universe. Deprived of this source of pleasure, no- 
thing is left to them but ambition or dissipation ; 
and the vices of the upper classes of Europe are, I 
believe, chiefly to be attributed to this single cause. 
— Stones of Venice^ III., p, 216. 

Only simple Tools needed.- A quick eye, a 
candid mind, and an earnest lieart, are all the 
microscopes and laboratories which any of us need ; 
and with a little clay, sand, salt, and sugar, a man 
may find out more of the methods of geological plie- 



456 A It US KIN ANTHOLOGY. 

nomenon than ever were known to Sir Charles 
Lyell. — In 3Io7itibus Sanctis, p. 25. 

Nors^DEscRiPT Species of A^^imals. — Between 
the gentes, or races of animals, and between the 
species, or families, there are invariably links — 
mongrel creatures, neither one thing nor another — 
but clumsy, blundering, hobbling, misshapen things. 
You are always thankful when you see one that you 
are not it. They are, according to old philosophy, 
in no x3rocess of development up or down, but are 
necessary, though much pitiable, where they are. 
Thus between the eagle and the trout, the mongrel 
or needful link is the penguin. Well, if you ever 
saw an eagle or a windhover fljing, I am sure you 
must have sometimes wished to be a windhover ; 
and if ever you saw a trout or a dolphin swimming, 
I am sure, if it was a hot day, you wished you could 
be a trout. But did ever anybody wish to Ije a pen- 
guin ? — Deucalion, p. 182. 

Would peep aa^d botaxize upox their Moth- 
er's Grave. — Men who have the habit of cluster- 
ing and harmonizing their thoughts are a little too 
apt to look scornfully uponthe harder workers who 
tear the bouquet to pieces to examine the stems. 
This was the chief narrowness of Wordsworth's 
mind ; he could not understand that to break a rock 
with a hammer in search of crystal may sometimes 
be an act not disgraceful to human nature, and 
that to dissect a flower may sometimes be as proper 
as to dream over it ; whereas all experience goes to 
t*^acli us, that among men of average intellect the 
most useful members of society are the dissectors, 
not the dreamers. — Jlodern Painters, III., p. 309. 

The Spectrum of Blood. — My friend showed 
me the rainbow of the rose, and the rainbow of the 
violet, and the rainbow of the hyacinth, and the 
rainbow of forest leaves being born, and the rain- 
bow of forest leaves dying. 

And, last, he showed me the rainbow of blood. It 
was but the three hundredth part of a grain, dis- 
solved in a. drop of water : and it cast its measured 



SCIENCE— BITS OF THOUGHT. 457 

bars, forever recognizable now to huinan sight, on 
tiie cliord of tlie seven colors. And no drop of that 
red rain can now be shed, so small as that the stain 
of it cannot be known, and the voice of it heard out 
of the ground. — Time and Tide, p. 110. 

MoDERX Scientific Knowledge an Asses' 
Bridge. — The fact is that the greater quantity of 
the knowledge which modern science is so saucy 
about, is only an asses' bridge, which the asses all 
stop at the top of, and which, moreover, they can't 
help stopping at the top of ; for they have from the 
beginning taken the wrong road, and so come to a 
broken bridge — a Polite rotto over the River of 
Death, by which the Pontifex Maximus allows them 
to i^ass no step farther. 

For instance — having invented telescopes and 
photography, you are all stuck up on your hobby- 
horses, because you know how big the moon is, 
and can get pictures of the volcanoes in it ! But 
you never can get any more than pictures of these, 
while in your own planet there are a thousand vol- 
canoes which you may jump into, if you have a 
mind to ; and may one day perhaps be blown sky 
high by, whether you have a mind or not. The 
last time the great volcano in Java was in eruij- 
tion, it threw out a stream of hot water as big as 
Lancaster Bay, and boiled twelve thousand people. 
That's what I call a volcano to be interested about, 
if you Avant sensational science. 

But if not, and vou can be content in the wonder 
and the power of Nature, without her terror, — here 
is a little bit of a volcano, close at your very doors 
— Yewdale Crag, which I think Avill be quiet for 
our time ; and on which the Anagallis tenella, and 
the golden potentilla, and the sun-dew grow to- 
gether among the dewy moss in peace. And on the 
cellular surface of one of the blocks of it, you may 
find more beauty, and learn more i^recious things, 
than with telescope or photograph from all the 
moons in the milky way, though every drop of it 
were anotli3r solar system. — Deucalion, pp. 142, 143. 



458 A liUSi^IN' ANTHOLOGY. 

Mr. Darwin's Account of the Peacock's 
Feather. — I went to it njyself, hoiDing to learn 
some of the existing laws of life which regulate the 
local disposition of the color. But none of these 
apjjear to be known ; and I am informed only that 
peacocks have grown to be peacocks out of brown 
pheasants, because the young feminine brown 
pheasants like fine feathers. Whereupon I say to 
myself, " Then either there was a distinct species of 
brown pheasants originally born with a taste for 
fine fea,thers : and therefore with remarkable eves 
in their heads, — which would be a much more won- 
derful distinction of species than being born with 
remarkable eyes in their tails, — or else all pheas- 
ants would have been peacocks by chis time ! " 
And I trouble myself no more about the Darwinian 
theory. — Eagle s Nest, p. 113. 

Science and Song. — You have, I doubt not, your 
new science of song, as of nest-building: and I am 
happy to think you could all explain to me, or at 
least you will be able to do so before you pass your 
natural science examination, how, by the accurate 
connection of a larynx with a bill, and by the ac- 
tion of heat, originally derived from the sun, upon 
the muscular fibre, an undulatory motion is pro- 
duced in the larynx, and an opening and sliutting 
one in the bill, which is accompanied, necessarily, by 
a piping sound.— JEJagle's Nest, p. 41. 

There are Sciences op the Arts, too.— It has 
become the permitted fashion among modern math- 
ematicians, chemists, and apothecaries, to call them- 
selves ''scientific men," as opposed to theologians, 
poets, and artists. They know their sphere to be a 
separate one; but their ridiculous notion of its being 
a peculiarly scientific one ought not to be allowed 
in our Universities. There is a science of Morals, a 
science of Ilistory, a science of Grammar, a science 
of Music, and a science of Painting; and all these 
are quite beyond comiDarison higher fields for 
human intellect, and require accuracies of in tenser 



SCIENCE— BITS OF THOUGHT. 459 

observation, than either chemistry, electricity, or 
geology. — Ariadne, p. 85. 

The Cult of Ugli2^^ess. — And the universal in- 
stinct of blapphemy in the modern vulgar scientific 
mind is a^bove all manifested in its love of what is 
ugly, and natural enthralment by the aboniinable; 
— so that it is ten to one if, in the description of a 
new bird, you learn much more of it than the enum- 
erated species of vermin that stick to its feathers ; 
and in the natural history museum of Oxford, hu- 
manity has been hitherto taught, not by portraits 
of great men, but by the skulls of cretins. — Storm 
Cloud, Lect. II., § 20. 

Science vs. Art.—" It is very fine," sculptors 
and painters say, " and very useful, this knocking 
the light out of the sun, or into it, by an eternal 
cataract of planets. But you may hail away, so, 
for ever, and you will not knock out what we can. 
Here is a bit of silver, not the size of half-a-crown, 
on which, with a single hammer stroke, one of us, 
two thousand and odd years ago, hit out the head 
of the Apollo of Clazomen?e. It is merely a matter 
of form; but if any of you philosophers, with your 
whole planetary system to hammer with, can hit 
out such another bit of silver as this, — we will take 
off our hats to you. For the present, we keep 
them on:'— Ethics of the Dust, p. 127. 

Rivers not deepe^ting but fillij^g up their 
Beds.— Niagara is a vast Exception— and Decep- 
tion. The true cataracts and falls of the great 
mountains, as the dear little cascades and leaplets 
of your own rills, fall where they fell of old ;— that 
is to say, wherever there's a hard bed of rock for 
them to jump over. They don't cut it away— and 
they can't. They do form pools beneath in a mys- 
tic way,— they excavate them to the depth which 
will break their fall's force— and then they excavate 
no more. — Deucalion, p. 13G. 

Decay in^ the Scale of ain'imated Life.- The 
decomposition of a crystal is not necessarily impure 
at all. The fermentation of a wholesome liquid be- 



460 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

gins to admit the idea sliglitly ; the decay of leaves 
yet more; of flowers, more; of animals, with greater 
painfulness and terribleness in exact proportion to 
their original vitality; and the foulest of all cor- 
ruption is that of the body of man ; and, in his 
body, that which is occasioned by disease, more 
than that of natural desith.— Jlodern Painters, V., 
p. 174. 

Geology. — Though an old member of the Geolog- 
ical Society, my geological observations have 
always been as completely ignored hy that society 
as my remarks on political economy by the direc- 
tors of the Bank of England.— J^i Montibus Sanctis. 

I do not believe that one in a hundred of our 
youth, or of our educated classes, out of directly 
scientific circles, take any real interest in geology. 
And for my own part, I do not wonder,— for it seems 
to me that geology t-ells us nothing really interest- 
ing. It tells us much about a world that once was. 
But, for my part, a world that only was, is as lit- 
tle interesting as a world that only is to be. I no 
more care to hear of the forms of mountains that 
crumbled away a million of years ago to leave room 
for the town of Kendal, than of forms of mountains 
that some future day may swallow up the town of 
Kendal in the cracks of them. I am only inter- 
ested — so ignoble a.nd unspeculative is my disposi- 
tion — in knowing how God made the Castle Hill of 
Kendal, for the Baron of it to build on, and how he 
brought the Kent through the dale of it, for its peo- 
ple and flocks to drink of. 

And these things, if you think of them, j'^ou will 
find are precisely what the geologists cannot tell 
you. They never trouble themselves about matters 
so recent, or so visible ; and while you may always 
obtain the most satisfactory information from them 
respecting the congelation of the whole globe out 
of gas, or the direction of it in space, there is really 
not one who can exj^lain to you the making of a 
pebble, or the running of a rivulet. — Deucalion, 
p. 127. 



SCIENCE— BITS OF THOUGHT. 4G1 

There are, broadly, three great demonstrable 
periods of the Earth's history: That in which it 
was crystallized ; that in which it was sculptured ; 
and that in which it is now being unsculptured, or 
deformed. These three periods interlace with each 
other, and gradate into each other — as the periods 
of human life do. Something dies in the child on 
the day that it is born — something is born in the 
man on the day that he dies : nevertheless, his life 
is broadly divided into youth, strength, and decrep- 
itude. In such clear sense, the Earth has its three 
ages : of their length we know as yet nothing, except 
that it has been greater than any man had imagined. 

The First Period. — But there was a period, or a 
succession of j^eriods, during which the rocks which 
are now hard were soft ; and in which, out of entirely 
different positions, and under entirely different con- 
ditions from any now existing or describable, the 
masses, of which the mountains you now see are 
made, were lifted and hardened, in the positions 
they now occupy, though in what forms Ave can now 
no more guess than we can the original outline of 
the block from the existing statue. 

The Second Period. — Then, out of those raised 
masses, more or less in lines compliant with their 
crystalline structure, the mountains we now see were 
hewn, or worn, during the second period, by forces 
for the most part differing botli in mode and vio- 
lence from any now in operation, but the result of 
which was to bring the surface of the earth into a 
form approximately that which it has possessed as 
far as the records of human history extend. — The 
Ararat of Moses's time, the Olympus and Ida of 
Homer's, are practically the same mountains now, 
that they were then. 

The Third Period. — Not, however, without some 
calculable, though superficial, change, and that 
change, one of steady degradation. For in the 
third, or historical period, the valleys excavated in 
the second period, are being filled up, and the moun- 
tains hewn in the second period, worn or ruined 
down. In the second era the valley of the Rhone 



4G2 A BUSKIA"- ANTHOLOGY. 

was being cut deeper every day; now it is every day 
being filled up witli gravel. In the second era, the 
scars of Derbyshire and Yorkshire were cut white 
and steep ; now they are being darkened by vegeta- 
tion, and crumbled by frost. You cannot, I repeat, 
sej)arate the periods with precision ; but, in their 
characters, they are as distinct as youth from age. 
— Deucalion, pp. 22, 23. 

The Discovery by James Forbes of the vis- 
cous Nature of Glacier Ice. — Professor Agassiz, 
of Neuchutel, had then [1841] been some eight or 
ten years at work on the glaciers : had built a cabin 
on one of them ; walked a great many times over 
a great many of them ; described a number of their 
phenomena quite correctly; proposed, and in some 
cases performed, many ingenious experiments upon 
them ; and indeed done almost everything that 
was to be done for them — except find out the one 
thing that we wanted to know. 

As his malicious fortune Avould have it, he invited 
in that year (1841) a man of acute brains — James 
Forbes — to see what he was about. The invitation 
was accepted. The visitor was a mathematician ; 
and after examining the question, for discussion of 
which Agassiz was able to supply him with all the 
data except those which were essential, resolved to 
find out the essential ones himself. Which in the 
next year (1842) ho quietly did ; and in 1843 solved 
the problem of glacier motion forever: announcing, 
to everybody's astonishment, and to the extreme 
disgust and mortification of all glacier students — 
including my poor self, (not the least envious, I 
fancy, though with as little right to be envious as 
any one)— ^that glaciers were not solid bodies at all, 
but semi-liquid ones, and ran down in their beds 
like so much treacle. ... 

But fancy the feelings of poor Agassiz in his Hotel 
des Neuchatelois ! To have had the thing under his 
nose for ten years, and missed it ! There is nothing 
in the annals of scientific mischance — (perhaps the 
truer word would be scientific dulness) — to match 
it ; certainly it would be difficult lor provocation 



SCIENCE— niTS OF THOUGHT. 468 

to be more bitter, — at least, for a man who thinks, 
as most of our foohsh modern scientific men do 
think, that tliere is no good in knowinji; anything 
for its own sake, but only in being the first to find 
it out. 

Nor am I prepared altogether to justify Forbes 
in his method of proceeding, except on the terms of 
battle which men of science have laid down for 
themselves. Here is a man has been ten years at 
his diggings ; has trenched here, and bored there, 
and been over all the ground again and again, ex- 
cept just where the nugget is. He asks one to din- 
ner — and oiie has an eye for the run of a stream ; 
one does a little bit of pickaxing in the afternoon 
on one's own account — and walks off with his nug- 
get.— i^or^, II., pp. 90, 91. 

A Glacier is a River of Honey.— Above all 
substances that can be i)roposed for definition of 
quality, glacier ice is the most defeating. For it is 
practically plastic ; but acttially viscous; — and that 
tothe full extent. You can beat or hammer it, like 
gold ; and it will stay in the form you have beaten 
it into, for a time ; — and so long a time, that, 
on all instant occasions of plasticity, it is practi- 
cally plastic. But only have patience to wait long 
enough, and it will run down out of the form you 
have stamped on it, as honey does, so that actually 
and inherently, it is viscous, and not jjlastic. — 
Deucalion, p. 56. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 527 278 6 



